xanafandomcom-20200214-history
Arthur LeGuin
it started with a low light; next thing i knew they ripped me from my bed New Britain was a newly terraformed planet, settled in the beginning by about thirty men and women and a handful of cows. As the habitable parts of the planet grew, little by little, and cities began to spring up, so did the population, and so did disputes over property and resources. It was in the midst of this burgeoning war that a fifteen-year-old boy named Athyr Liung rose to power. Prior to the war--about sixteen years prior, in fact--the enterprising mercenary Vtere Liung decided to try his luck on New Britain, at least for a little while. While he was there, he met a beautiful woman with whom he decided he was damned sure going to sleep. Unfortunately, Eigyr was devoted to her husband, so Vtere, who as we said was enterprising, enlisted a brilliant scientist turned backwater shaman and successfully date-raped her. Then he killed her husband and married her. She gave birth to a son nine months later. Then Vtere died unexpectedly, leaving Eigyr and her two daughters Marguel and Anna with no protection. This was not of interest to the shaman, Merdhin, who spirited the boy off to the house of an ex-military man and his son Cai, with whom he was raised. Fastforward fifteen years. It was with Cai's help, and the help of a group of men and women who bore some alliance to his father (Vtere made up in brains and power what he lacked in being a decent human being), that Athyr gained control of the government of New Britain. and then they took my blood type When he took the throne, Athyr's name was changed, for the purpose of all official business, to Arthur LeGuin, and he also gained the title of Dragon King (his subjects call him, somewhat offhandedly, "the Dragon"). To be quite honest it makes him a little uncomfortable, but as Cai was constantly reminding him it's important to have a title that conveys power and authority, and he knows that's true. Cai had been Athyr's best support. Despite the fact that he was plagued with unluckiness and a sullen nature about it, he was strong at arms and made an imposing figure; too, he was smart with finances and supplies and the clock-cog parts of running a kingdom that Athyr himself didn't have time to go into. It was possible Cai resented the way things turned out, but he'd always been loyal, and Athyr adored him. Besides Cai there was Bedwyr, who was a good ten years older than Athyr and brain-breakingly practical; Gwalchmai, Athyr's charismatic and extremely adept nephew; and Lanselos, Athyr's best friend. Other important players in this drama include Anna and Marguel, the sisters. Anna, in a splendid example of breaking cultural norms, fell in love with her half-brother and seduced him shortly after his rise to power, in a fleeting romance that ended when Merdhin informed Athyr of their blood relationship. Anna was quickly married to a politician, both to remove her from Athyr and to make an allegiance with the planet Manassah, where Aloth was in a position of considerable power. Anna had one child from her relationship with Athyr, named Medraut, and five with Aloth: Gwalchmai, Geffreyn, Gadriet, Gahereth and Clarissant. All five boys eventually came to New Britain for work and opportunities with their uncle, especially as it removed them from Anna, who (not unjustifiably) resented the whole business and especially the brother she still loved for sending her so far away. Meanwhile Marguel blames Athyr for the misery Vtere put her family through, mostly because he's the only one left to blame. Athyr hasn't really decided whether he likes her or is terrified of her--she periodically tried to kill him, but it was kind of a game after a while, and he never quite lost. Marguel is married to Vrweyn, a less important chieftain of a less important area of New Britain; like Merdhin, she's a skilled scientist who spent most of her life prior to marriage on an Alliance planet where she received formal training in genetics. Most important, however, was Athyr's wife Gwenore. Prior to landing on New Britain she worked as a pilot for the Alliance, then decided she was less than impressed with their tactics and defected. A tiny, backwater planet like New Britain seemed like a pretty good hiding place, and her skill with weaponry proved useful to Athyr (as did the fact that nobody ever thought this teeny tiny soft-spoken blonde woman was going to KICK YOUR ASS). While she was working for him they fell in love and married. For about ten years they were extremely happy, and then Gwenore fell out of love with Athyr, who was charismatic but not all that exciting really, and into love with Lanselos, who was a little too exciting. you know that i was hoping that i could leave this star-crossed world behind The affair wouldn't really have mattered--Athyr staunchly pretended he had no idea what was going on, despite the sometimes farcical measures he had to go to to keep up that pretence, for a good fifteen years--except that eventually his nephew Geffreyn exposed the couple in flagrante delicto and Lanselos, furious, killed him. The resulting civil unrest forced Athyr to challenge his best friend to combat. Gwenore tried to head off the fight by shooting Athyr in the arm, a small injury that nevertheless rendered him unfit, but was imprisoned for treason as a result. This, in turn, led Lanselos to break her out in a daring and poorly-thought-out rescue that ended in the deaths of a lot of innocent people, including Gadriet and Gahereth. Gwalchmai insisted on going to war with Lanselos, and Athyr, who was quickly losing his hold over the united New Britain, agreed. While he was away, he put Medraut in charge of Camallate. He should have chosen someone else. He would have chosen someone else, but Cai had been killed during a peacekeeping mission turned bad about five years prior (breaking Athyr's heart in the process), and Merdhin had disappeared even earlier than that when he realised that Athyr no longer trusted him to give good advice (mostly because Merdhin was trying to turn Athyr against his son). Bedwyr he wanted with him in the campaign, and Gwalchmai, his official heir, was definitely not going to stay behind. But Medraut was grieving, or maybe he was angry, or maybe he genuinely didn't like the way Athyr was running things--the reasoning, not yet explored by historians of the planet, is unclear--and on a platform of social reform he divided the already shaky kingdom into two factions, one deeply loyal to him. This faction was mostly made up of discontented young people who didn't remember how appalling things had been when Athyr took power, but a fair number of veteran revolutionaries who felt Athyr wasn't controlling things well enough. Athyr was forced to call off the campaign against Lanselos in order to return to Camallate and try to take control back from his nephew. This culminated in a long and painful battle on the plain of Camlann, where the following very important things happened: Firstly, Gwenore was shot and killed trying to protect Athyr on the battlefield. Secondly, Gwalchmai was killed by Medraut in a one-on-one combat which Medraut had called for in what was essentially a desperate attempt at assisted suicide. Finally, Medraut and Athyr both wounded one another fatally on the third day. but when they cut me open i guessed that changed my mind Which would have been the end of it, the end of everything, except that Marguel rescued Athyr's body from the field. Their relationship had always been complex, a little less than orthodox, even if she wasn't the one trying to sleep with him, even if she hated him a little and he had no idea what she was thinking. She collared a pilot, Nimiane, who took the dying king and his sister to the nearest Alliance planet. Here Marguel sold her brother's physical rights for his life. The Alliance doctors saved him in exchange for the chance to try some new experimental techniques, to root around in the cavity of his chest, to tweak a little through the bone-piercing cuts in his head. Athyr lived, but to this day he has no idea the extent of what was done to him on Vallone. i hear those voices at night sometimes Some of Athyr's symptoms include: *losing chunks of time, sort of like absence seizures *flashbacks *vertigo *hyperacusis *a sensation not unlike that of being caught in the moment of time between normal acceleration and light speed *inability to age *insensitivity/oversensitivity to haptics it was the turning point Marguel was there when the doctors let him go, and she explained a little of what had happened. She also promised that, with Nimiane's help, they would get back to New Britain, where Athyr is desperately convinced he can fix things. He probably can't. Anyway it doesn't matter, because on the way there the Broceliande hit some kind of spacial anomaly (as you do), and Athyr ended up in the Nexus. So far he's putting this down to his usual source of confusion. and the public don't dwell on my transmission Attentive readers may have noted some similarities to another famous king and his story. Here are some people Athyr doesn't realise he already (doesn't) know: the song-maker says it ain't so bad Mordred Sir Lamorak Sir Peredur Sir Agravain Dinadan Sagramore Gaheris Melou the dream-maker's gonna make you mad Anna of Cornwall Morgana Clarissant the spaceman says everybody look down Here are some people he does know! (more to come) i might have just flown too far from the floor Arthur LeGuin is an original character. His face is the very pretty Dude Whose Name I Don't Remember (Rodrigo Santoro). This song is "Spaceman" by the Killers. Category:Characters Category:Living